Mother Dear
by Old English Game
Summary: Because the women who managed to raise our heroes deserve all the love they can get.
1. Chapter 1

Richard Baker's mother had never been one to mince words, nor was she one to watch her tongue when she meant business, and she always meant business. Suzanne Baker was the most down-to-earth, honest, most wonderful, blessed woman he ever knew, and it would stay that way until he found a wife. She had absolutely no qualms about chewing out any of the neighbor boys when they came speeding down the drive in their fancy cars, or stayed out until all ungodly hours with their wild parties, keeping half of the whole country from getting their sleep (according to her, at least, but with much stronger language). And boy, if any one of them suggested that their skin color should have anything to do with it, they'd be lucky if she didn't give them all a good whipping right there. No matter what, they'd always be left in a daze from the earful she gave them.

And then she'd spin on her heel, stride up their walk to where Richard sat on the steps, and say, "Richard, dear, don't you ever take an insult laying down. But you'd better not repeat any of those words to anyone, okay, sweet?"

Now, Baker can't be more glad of his upbringing, in a place like this he certainly needs it.

* * *

To four-year old Peter Newkirk barely tall enough to see over the stage when he was standing on a chair in the front row, Kate Newkirk was the most beautiful dancer in all of England - heck, the best in the world. She could spin and leap and twirl and the best of her smiles were for him and Mavis, and eventually the whole assortment of kids who ended up joining their clan. And what better than a dancer who could tell a great story and make the best cakes and sing songs just for him and be his mother?

Now, even though she's been gone quite a while, she's still his mother, and he talks about her with as much pride as if he was barely on his feet, toddling around the circus, proudly proclaiming to anyone who might listen that his mother was the bestest mom in the whole big world.

* * *

James Kinchloe was the youngest of his family, his mother had died not too long after she had him, and the mantle of mothering had fallen solely upon the shoulders of Summer Kinchloe, who was a good fifteen years older than he was. By some miracle, she managed to get meals on the table and fought tooth and nail to keep custody of her three younger brothers after his father had disappeared a couple years later. Accordingly, he, Isaac, and Jonathan interrogated her dates with an alarming amount of seriousness and hostility for three boys, all less than ten years old.

And, while he, Isaac, and Jonathan came out of boyhood with a few more scars than they probably should have, he often wonders if his real mother could have done any better.

* * *

When he was younger, if anyone asked Louis LeBeau why he loved his Maman, he would say it was because she cooked, and she taught him to cook, or she could recite any recipe from memory, or something to do with cooking, whatever it was. He knew it was so much more, even when he was younger, but he didn't really have any right way of putting it, not from his five-year-old vocabulary. And he doesn't now, either. But he loves Estelle LeBeau more than any of the ladies he's courted, which is really saying a lot, and sometimes he'll get out his one photo of her, taken just after she had Claudia, asleep on the couch with a half dozen children clustered around her (he's not sure which ones they are, they all look alike), and pray that after all this mess she's safe to come home to.

* * *

KellyAnn Hogan, it was really a wonder she'd ended up married to Robert Hogan (the older one) because he was big and broad and more than a little brusque, being military and all, and she was a delicate little thing, like, really little, and so careful and often a little too worrisome. She stood out so blatantly in the family photos, tucked under her husband's arm and the only redhead out of all of them.

Somehow, she had survived the Hogan family - or rather, kept the Hogan family alive. Even when Robert's father died of tuberculosis and what was left of the family moved in with his grandparents, and then George lost his arm in the farming accident and Ruth started running off for weeks at a time, she kept them together. Those years were harder on her than any, but they could always come home to a hug and a kiss and too many life lessons for her to get into their thick skulls.

Hogan would be damned if he got killed and set her hurting again.

* * *

Really, it was a wonder poor Elaine Carter managed to keep Andrew from blowing himself and his peers up before the age of three. How he had managed to get up to the very top shelf on his chubby toddler legs, and then pry open the lids of the most volatile cleaning supplies she owned, and dump that all on the ground with a healthy amount of baking soda and vinegar… it was decided early on that the kid had a knack for destruction. The kitchen tile never fully recovered.

And, of course, it didn't stop there. Despite his sunshiney, innocent personality, he managed to destory the garden thrice, blow up the tool shed, and get himself banned from four grocery stores - all of this before he turned ten. And then his little brother was born. She'd be lucky if Alan didn't blow her up before Andrew got home.

Because shoot, he was going to see his mom again if he had to move Heaven and Earth to get there.

* * *

**"If at first you don't succeed, try doing it the way your mom told you to in the beginning." -Unknown**


	2. Chapter 2

John Olsen was raised largely by his grandmother, Anagret Baier, a flamboyant, unstoppable German _hausfrau_ who didn't hardly speak a lick of English, but somehow managed to get by after they moved to America, generally carting John or one of his younger sisters with her to do the talking, and instead of being too proud to admit that she didn't have any idea what anyone was saying, she showed off her grandchildren any chance she got, switching from German to English and occasionally throwing in a bit of Yiddish, just for fun. They had guests over fairly often, because her cooking was the best in the entire town, and she'd started catering for events by the time John went into the military. He'd volunteered, he'd wanted too, although he hadn't been sure what she would think of it. She'd lived in Germany for sixty-odd-something years and now her grandson wanted to go fight her people.

But when he told her, she sat him down and said (In German, of course), "John, you go set those people right. Give them back their country, and tell me all about it when you get home."

The operation will be classified years after she's gone, Olsen's sure, but dang it if he doesn't go straight home and tell her every last bit of it.

* * *

Vladimir Minsk couldn't say a that Lidiya was a particularly emotional or sympathetic mother, and, come to think of it, he had maybe one or two memories of her smiling. Then again, she had eleven children to keep track of, so he didn't expect that she had any time to devote towards any specific child.

For the most part, she kept them out of trouble with sewing. After they'd gotten home from school and finished their chores, whatever children happened to be in her line of sight were plucked up (she was strong) and sat in her sewing room. Until Vladimir was nine or ten, he mostly just patched holes in things or made mittens and hats and whatnot, but then he started sewing clothes for the family.

That was one of his best memories, after he'd finished his first shirt, for Leo, the oldest, and given it to his mother for inspection. She'd held it up, looked at it sourly, and then turned to Vladimir and _smiled._ It shocked him badly enough that he froze right there and then she scolded him for staring, but that stuck with him for the rest of his life.

She died several years before he was drafted. And for some reason, Minsk can't figure out why to save his life, he misses her more than anything.

* * *

Hattie Wilson was a bright woman, and certainly, there must have been a time when she wasn't smiling, because she had to discipline her child somehow, but Joseph couldn't remember one to save his life. Not, at least, until the cancer spread.

Joseph was up as late as he could be before the candle burned out (they didn't have electricity, not only was the depression hard on them but the doctors' bills were awful, although he never heard about it until he was older), poring over every book he could find on cancer, and eventually anything medically related at all. At the ripe old age of eight, he was convinced if he worked hard enough he could figure out how to save her.

Wilson finally got into medical school, twenty-five years after she died. He might have been too late to save his mother, but he does good now, and he's sure she'd be proud of him.

* * *

Thomas Foster's mother was a Godly woman. His father was a drunkard, a cheat, and a freeloader, but the day that Elizabeth Foster didn't see her children off to Sunday School with his Bible tucked under one arm and the Beatitudes and a new Psalm memorized every week would be the day that Hell froze over.

The day Thomas was drafted, she told him, "Thomas, this is your chance, you'd better do what's right by God. I don't want to hear that you were out fighting and didn't take every chance you got to give those boys the Word. Because they need it."

He'd promised. He'd kept that promise since 1941, and he didn't have any intentions of stopping now.

* * *

Catherine Elizabeth Emmaline Breckenridge Crittendon was her full name. Her children called her Mother, her husband called her Catherine, and sometimes he would call her Elizabeth or, God help him, Emmaline, in the same scandalous tone as a naughty teenage boy, and she would squeak and turn bright red. She was the trimmest, most proper Englishwoman Rodney had met, except for the teller at their bank who scared him to bits every time they went in there. They did have a housekeeper, who, of course, kept house, but if the poor woman stepped within ten feet of the garden she was in danger of losing her job. Because the Crittendon's sprawling backyard was Catherine's domain, she chose every seed herself and kept every pinch of dirt just where she wanted, and the lilies in the fountain never grew past exactly where she wanted them. But her favorite flowers were geraniums, and Rodney wonders if there must be some history behind her love for them, because they're everywhere. Even when it turned out that Eunice was allergic to the flowers, and had to barricade herself in her room come springtime, Catherine kept the geraniums. Hundreds of them, there were. Rodney had almost suggested, once, that she try tulips or lilacs or something instead, but he mentioned the geraniums and saw her eyes light up, and didn't have the heart to go through with it.

He's hoping, now, that maybe if he gets a plan in motion to plant geraniums elsewhere - namely, away from their property and poor Eunice - that she might donate some of the dashed things for the cause.

* * *

I'm pretty sure that Joseph seems to be the widely accepted first name for Wilson (the medic). Also, I liked the idea that a lot of people have had of Thomas Foster (the two names he was referred to as in the show), who was played by William Christopher, was a chaplain, since Christopher plays a chaplain in the series M*A*S*H. Also, I couldn't figure out the feminine form of Minsk (since the Russian surnames are gender-specific).

**-Caroline**


	3. Chapter 3

Lisa Schultz was a plump, cheery little woman who reminded Hans of a mother hen. She loved cornflowers and sheep and, of course, food, as it was a common trait in their bloodline (from both sides of the family; his parents had met when he crashed into her while running towards a toppled food vendor's cart, although whether it was pastries or meat pies was debated). But on the other side of her sweetness, she was a fiery, passionate woman. Heaven help him if Hans got caught doing something wrong, because he'd be lucky if he could sit down for the next two weeks - and she didn't need to wait for his father to come home to belt him.

Some of the sting is gone from her fire now - actually, most of it, she's way on in her years - but Schultz can see the burning in her eyes when he pushes her wheelchair past a Gestapo patrol, or when Hitler's speech is on every radio station, and he hopes sincerely that she doesn't do something stupid and get herself executed - because at the rate things are going, she's not letting natural causes catch up with her anytime soon.

* * *

Karl can't say that he knew Rosa Langenscheidt very well, by the time he was born her mind was going downhill. She'd had enough grief, her husband had died just a few months before, and her brother and father had both killed themselves within a year of each other. She never quite came back, although she did her best with Karl and his older brother Oskar. She always had a smile when they came home, even on her worse days, and she never forgot about Oskar's football games nor Karl's spelling tournaments (he certainly wasn't very good at sports, the boy was built like a toothpick and had the constitution of a wet napkin), and, in return, the boys took the best care of her as two boys could. And while they were naturally devastated when she passed, it was a blessing in disguise that she died before she discovered Oskar's growing fame as Oskar Danzig, female impersonator. The pure shock of it would have killed her.

So Langenscheidt never knew his mother, except for Oskar's stories, and he hasn't amounted to much either, and he doesn't have any great plans or a girlfriend or anything of the like, but he's here, and somehow, he thinks she would be proud.

* * *

Wilhelm Klink came from a fine line of well-bred German aristocrats, and somehow his mother was the one exception.

Not that Heidi Klink was strange, of course, or bad, or anything like that, in fact she was just the opposite. Not until he turned fifteen and travelled to Munich with his friend did Wilhelm meet another mother who loved to wade in the creek with her children, and wrecked almost as many sets of clothes as her two boys. She loved to tell stories about pirates, and whenever his father was away they did the stupidest things together. Not that they didn't love his father, certainly he had his fine qualities, but if Wilhelm Klink ever saw his wife and two boys rolling around in the cow field and digging up worms and frogs and other nasty things, he may very well have had a heart attack.

Klink isn't sure how he didn't inherit any of his mother's adventurous spirit, that seems to have gone mostly to Wolfgang. But, then again, maybe he did, and it's just waiting until after the war, when adventure isn't punishable by firing squad.


End file.
